jack

Augurs well that they were willing to make the effort with the tax office. Glad you got it resolved!

Aside from this offer, October is apparently the best time to buy at Howden's. They have a big sale, and they're very responsive to offers (especially towards the end of the month) so they can turn over as much stock as they can. We were told this by one of the contractors we had onsite and he was dead right.

Pretty sure that's what we have in our utility room. Seems fine - they use Blum hardware, which is proving solid so far. One minor shortcut they use (at least on the handle-less doors we have) is to cut for hinges on both sides of the door, then blank off the unused ones. Not the neatest solution, but hey, it's a utility room!

What's his reason for wanting timber clad? Are you rural/semi-rural and he wants a barn-like look?

We were the same all last year. Hardly a day (or even an evening) off, and any time we did take off had us both sitting there feeling guilty! It's taken us a surprising amount of time to break out of that feeling.

Would they consider invoicing you for the total amount as "supply"?

That's a particularly galling situation. We got stung a couple of times that way. Another: while I'm happy with the Loxone home automation system we installed, we went for too many dimmers. It would have been smarter (and cheaper!) to just use undimmed lights in several places, especially where there are several light circuits that can be switched in via scenes to make things brighter. The Photonstar lights we've installed give out really beautiful light. I sometimes feel we paid too much for those (adds up when you need a separate expensive driver for each), but then the light quality is very good, they look great, and in some areas we were able to use powerful wide beam versions so didn't need to fill the ceiling with them. Our 6m x 5m kitchen, for example, only has 7 downlights and it's perfectly bright enough at night (and that's without any of the other lights in the room on!) The recently redeveloped house next door has something like 20 much cheaper lights in similar area!

Might be worth starting a thread about things people have paid a bit more for that turned out as well as (or better than) hoped.

You hopeless romantic. Thought of another couple of regrets: No multi-point locking on the steel doors to my work shop (which is as the back of my garage). I was surprised how flimsy the doors are. It wouldn't take much to lever the top or bottom open while they're locked. When I get a moment (ha!) I'm going to look at retrofitting. Our kitchen has too much floor to ceiling glass. I wish we'd gone with our original design, which had an area with a low wall, where we could at least have put a couple of seats without having them in front of windows. Bound to more to come...

Brick slips. Wish I'd never seen the bloody things. They cost us thousands and thousands extra over render and I think the render would have looked better. Touch and go on some of the external blinds. They were quite expensive, and annoyingly they don't actually act that well to block out light due to various holes and gaps. They work brilliantly on our western elevation though, and actually make the house look better in my opinion (we don't bring them all the way up, just feather them open when they aren't being used to block the sun). I believe we overspent on the MVHR. We went for a Passivhaus Certified Brink unit. I suspect I could easily have saved £2-3k on a cheaper unit and ducting and had as good a result. I wish we'd spent the money installing something for sparkling water. My wife and I both love it, and always said we'd find a way to have it on tap in the new place, but between one thing and another it ended up looking like an extravagance that would require yet another tap (didn't find any all-in-ones we liked, so we have an ordinary mixer tap and a separate boiling water tap). Hard to justify the cost anyway when Sainsburys does 2L bottles for 13p, but I hate throwing out PET bottles so we end up doing without. We had my mother in law, a friend of ours and the kitchen supplier saying that once we had a steam oven we'd never be without it. I think we've used it less than once a month! We chose a shade of carpet for our snug/TV room which frankly looks ridiculous. We both hate it. Should have just concreted throughout and used a rug in there. Re: ice, I just keep three or four trays full in the freezer. If I know we have a big do coming up, I freeze some huge tupperware containers full of water a few days beforehand then smash it up the night we need it. I'm sure other things will come to mind... I have so many regrets it isn't even funny!

I don't know what model they have. It's been there for several years - at least 10, I guess. Maybe it isn't being used as intended? Can't help you with the other question I'm afraid!

Friends of ours have a saniflow in the basement. It's shared by a toilet and washing machine. The continuous flow of the washing machine means that the internal works of the saniflow are kept very clean.

Also, as a supplier of materials, they need to take responsibility for defects. If a material defect presents itself after installation, then the contractor has to remove it, source new material and replace it. If you supply the materials, then there's no such risk, assuming installation wasn't the problem.

As promised, some photos of our concrete. First, our entrance and hall: Next, a couple of photos of the the concrete itself: One thing you need to be aware of if you're getting it polished after your studwork goes up is that the power floating and then polishing doesn't give you the same effect at room edges as in the middle. We were warned about this, although I must say that the differences extend much further into the room than I expected. These are two of the worst affected areas: We're still happy with the result though. Concrete is an industrial product, so an industrial result is fine. From memory we paid around £90/sqm laid and polished.

This sort of thing: http://www.lbsbmonline.co.uk/product-details.asp?Auto_ID=193455 We have it in our screed in a couple of rooms.

Pretty much what we concluded too.

Top tip for internet searching where you know what you're looking for but don't know what terms to use: just use natural English and browse the image results! That link was on the first page of image results for "rubber ladder".

We looked into something like this early on in the design process and were very surprised at how consistent the advice we got from people involved with, eg, passivhaus and the AECB, was. To a person, they said that you'd never get your money back given the costs of supply, installation, extra pipework, and ongoing maintenance.

Thus? http://www.directindustry.com/prod/l-echelle-europeenne/product-143598-1600667.html

From memory, the guys that did ours said it's best to let it go off for a few days after power floating, but no more, before polishing. There's a balance - you want it hard enough to take a polish, but not so hard that polishing takes forever.

Bit of a long story, but the slab concrete didn't set right (combination of unexpected squalls followed by freezing weather in the following two days). MBC suggested raising the entire house by a stud width (38mm) and then flowing in a screed. In the end, we decided to go with concrete. We'd allowed for 25mm floor coverings, and that plus the 38mm gave us just enough to squeeze in ~65mm of concrete which was then power-floated to within an inch of its life and then polished and sealed. 65mm is less than the recommended minimum of 75mm and we do have a couple of cracks. Still worth it. I'll post some photos later.

We have polished concrete on top of an MBC slab. Let me know if you want some photos.

We're in the south east of England so not quite the same climate as you, but our experience so far has been excellent. We have an insulated slab with UFH and MBC twin stud walls. 290m2 over two floors, no heating upstairs. We have 8.5kW of PV and an immersion diverter for our 250L UVC, and as far as I know our 5kW ASHP literally hasn't turned on for several weeks this summer. We had people, including our plumber, express a lot of concern over our choice of a 5kW Panasonic Aquarea unit for a house the size of ours. The general argument was that it would be flat out for several hours heating the tank to 55 degrees from cold, and that the house would go cold over this period. During the one admittedly mild winter we've so far been through, that wasn't the experience at all. Bearing in mind that it takes most of a day for the slab temp to drop any meaningful amount, we had the ASHP set to come on from 4 to 6am, to heat the tank to 55 degrees. At 6, the ASHP would turn off and the top quarter of the tank would then be heated to 85 degrees using the upper immersion. The slab temp stayed rock solid during this period. To be honest, I set this up as a temporary measure when we moved in, but it's worked so well that I haven't bothered changing it yet. We never ran out of hot water over winter and as far as I can tell there wasn't a lot of defrosting going on (based on temp of water returning to the ASHP, which we logged). I haven't paid much attention to our bills but my wife says they're much lower than when we were running an 87m2 oil-heated bungalow on the same site (and that's without counting FiTs). I do wonder how things will go when we have a cold wet winter but so far it's all good. We also haven't yet had call to turn on the cooling function on the ASHP despite a long run of hot weather recently. We do have quite a lot of useful shade from trees along with carefully positioned overhangs, so clearly that helps. If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

Looks like a good mix of sizes there. Should bed down nicely (and it will need to looking at that slope! )

Our PV was commissioned in July last year - several months before our as-built EPC was prepared - and we had no problem when we applied for the FiT late last year. You're right that the rule changed in May, but it looks like the only difference was to prevent same-day applications (underlined bits are the only change): "Solar PV applications submitted before 10 May need to provide an EPC which was issued on or before (and not after) the commissioning date of the system. Solar PV applications submitted on or after 10 May need to provide an EPC which was issued before (and not on or after) the commissioning date of the system." Based on the "before 10 May" criterion, we shouldn't have been able to get the FiT! Perhaps the rule was different late last year when we applied? Be interesting to see what your PV provider has to say. P.S. I deleted my previous post because it wasn't relevant. I assumed you meant you got a lower rate due to a drop in FiTs, rather than due to the "lower" designation due to EPC date relative to PV commissioning.